Meet the Monster: Turkish Fascism
Turkish Daily News
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
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It is simply tragic and repulsive to see some prominent figures
in Turkey who insist on putting the blame on imagined ‘external
enemies.’ Alas, enough is enough, and it is time to be honest. What
we are facing is an internal enemy. And it deserves being called
‘Turkish fascism’
MUSTAFA AKYOL
Hrant Dink, a beacon of conscience and liberty, was shot dead on
Jan. 19. Since that black Friday, many Turks have shown the virtue
to condemn this heinous murder and cry out for the memory of this
noble man. Yet some of our "opinion leaders" have also invented
concealed plots against "the Turkish nation" behind this public
killing. This is, they rushed to conclude, a maneuver by "foreign
powers" and their intelligence services directed at putting Turkey
in a difficult situation in the international scene.
But lo and behold! The Turkish police caught the killer and he turned
out to be no agent of the CIA. Nor of Mossad, MI6, Mukhabarat, or some
People’s Army for The Liberation of The Turkish-Occupied Wherever. He
is neither Armenian nor Kurdish. He is, as his family proudly noted,
"of pure Turkish stock." Moreover, as he himself proudly noted, he
is a die-hard Turkish nationalist who killed Dink out of his zeal
for the "Turkish blood." It also turned out that the 17-year-old
apparatchik was directed by his elder "brothers" in Trabzon who
have an ugly history of nationalist violence. The city, after all,
is the citadel of ultra-nationalism: Catholic priest Father Andrea
Santoro was also shot there a year ago by a 16-year-old militant,
who had a profile very similar to his comrade who killed Dink.
In the face of all that, it is simply tragic and repulsive to see
some prominent figures in Turkey who insist on putting the blame on
imagined "external enemies." Alas, enough is enough, and it is time
be honest. What we are facing is an internal enemy. And it deserves
to be called "Turkish fascism."
Measuring the Turkish skull:
The term does not imply an organic link between Turks and the fascist
ideology. The latter is a modern disease that has influenced many
nations throughout the 20th century. Germans and Italians are the two
most obvious cases, of course, but there are countless others. Even
the quintessentially liberal Anglo-Saxons had their experience with the
monster. (Remember the Ku Klux Klan and the British Union of Fascists.)
In Turkey, the story of fascism is most ironic, because although our
contemporary fascists are fanatically anti-Western, the ideology is
an import from the West into the traditionally multicultural lands
of the great Ottoman Empire. It all began with the Social Darwinism
that some Young Turk intellectuals, such as Yusuf Akcura, acquired in
European capitals in the turn of the century. Their vision of a fully
Turkified state came true in the 1920’s, with the creation of the
Turkish Republic. Ataturk’s vision for this new state was not racist,
he instead defined Turkishness in terms culture and citizenship, but
things started to change in the ’30s. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany
were admired by some of the Republican elite, such as Recep Peker,
the long-time general secretary of the CHP (the party, which is now
chaired by his intellectual descendant, Deniz Baykal.) The Turkey
of the ’30s also imitated corporatism, the economic model of fascist
Italy, and internalized Mussolini’s motto, "Everything for the State;
nothing outside the State; nothing against the State."
In the same period, "Turkishness" also acquired an ethnic meaning. An
officially sanctioned "scientific" congress was held in Ankara in 1932,
in which the "advanced" features of the "Turkish skull" was praised
and Turks were proudly declared to be "Aryans." During the same period,
public calls for applicants to government offices demanded them to be
"of the Turkish stock." Tevfik RuÅ~_tu Aras, the foreign minister,
affirmed, "Kurds will be beaten by Turks in the struggle for life." And
Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, the minister of justice, notoriously announced,
"In Turkey, non-Turks are the servants and slaves of Turks."
During the war years, Turkey also initiated the infamous Wealth Tax,
which was designed to confiscate the properties of its Christian
and Jewish citizens. 1942, the first and only Jewish labor camp was
established in AÅ~_kale, a district in Erzurum. Had the Third Reich
won the war, Turkey apparently would not have had much trouble fitting
into its "new order."
The hysteria on ‘internal enemies’:
Of course, Turkey never became fully fascist, but there is plenty of
evidence to argue that it was deeply influenced by that monstrous
ideology. But, alas, since Turkey never became fully fascist, it
never had the chance to fully liberate itself from it. Post-war
Germany, Italy and Japan started as tabula rasas, but Turkey had
only a partial transition to democracy. In 1950, the Democrat Party
(DP) came to power in the first free and fair elections since the
beginning of the republic, with the motto, "Enough, the nation has
the word!" But with a military coup in 1960, the DP was crushed by
despots in uniform, who did not hesitate to execute Prime Minister
Adnan Menderes and two of his ministers after a show trial.
Since then, fascism, not as a system but a spirit, has survived in
Turkey. The depiction of all other nations as "the enemies of Turks,"
the cult of personality built around the country’s founder, and the
deification of the state are all elements of that spirit. In recent
years, as a reaction to the EU-inspired push for more democracy and
freedom, the fascist rhetoric has ascended. Some elements of the media,
along with some pundits, bureaucrats and politicians, systematically
spread the fear that Turkey is facing existential threats. Kurds,
Armenians, Jews, Greeks, missionaries, non-nationalist Muslims —
anybody who falls outside the narrow definition of a "good Turk" —
are all seen as "internal enemies," who are in bed with the external
ones — the Europeans, the Americans, Iraqi Kurds, and, actually,
the whole world.
The militant who killed Dink is the product of this popular
hysteria. Unless we accept this bitter fact and start to think
seriously about our internal fascism, it is quite likely that Turkey
will produce more of them. "Nationalism is the last refuge of the
scoundrel," said Samuel Johnson. We should not tolerate becoming a
nation of scoundrels.
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